


Colliding Worlds

by faithinthepoor



Series: Firefly [4]
Category: Firefly
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 01:31:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/628800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithinthepoor/pseuds/faithinthepoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during and post Shindig</p>
            </blockquote>





	Colliding Worlds

**Author's Note:**

> In my series this follows [Event Horizons](http://archiveofourown.org/works/626636), [Space They Cannot Touch](http://archiveofourown.org/works/626647) and [Gravitational Pull](http://archiveofourown.org/works/628793)

Walking into the ballroom she feels like a princess in a real life fairytale, every where her eyes fall, from hovering chandlers to a food laden table, they find magic. As Captain Tightpants gives her permission to investigate the buffet she feels like she is floating on air and she can’t wait to twirl around the room in her pretty dress once she has had her fill of fresh fruit and other delicacies. The room is full of beautiful girls flittering around on their butterfly wings made of silk and as she runs a gloved hand over her ruffles she thinks she must be dreaming because this is all too good to be true. She tries to scan the crowd for a man with a red sash but she can’t help but look for Inara, she desperately wants to see the companion and more importantly she wants Inara to see her. She may have kissed Inara goodbye and told her to enjoy herself but three days is a long time to be apart and as she looks around the room of splendour she realises that if she spent three days in this world, she might not want to come back. Inara seems happy to be on Serenity but on their ship she is a precious flower that is being kept from the light and one day she may wilt and die. 

She wanted Inara to see her looking so pretty, to remind her of what she would be coming home to but then the girls told her that her dress looked store bought and she felt like the sheep walking on hind legs that the Captain told her that she would be in this dress. She feels so foolish, when the nasty girls had been talking about her ‘girl’ she had assumed that they had meant her lover and was going to try and point out Inara, it had never occurred to her that they would be referring to help. She is rescued from their snooty clutches and even though the girls are pulled down several pegs in the process, their words stay with her and they are right, she is not like these people, she doesn’t belong here and she decides not to actively seek out Inara’s company because she no longer wants Inara to see her in this setting. She is able to find her footing by talking about ships but that is just being her, she might as well be in her grease stained overalls because these men don’t see a lady, they see an oddity, a female creature that has been wired wrong, a girl who and talks like a boy. 

It’s impossible to avoid Inara, not noticing her would be like failing to notice a sun, she sparkles and shines in her dress of gold and everyone in the room is drawn to her. She watches as Inara dances with her fancy gentleman and then with Mal and wonders how she ever thought that she could have anything with her, Inara is more than a person, she is walking talking parcel of beauty and sex and she is certainly out of Kaylee’s league. The men get into an argument over Inara’s honour as though they own her and again she is forced to wonder where she fits in and when the argument leads to a duel she is as frightened for her future with Inara as she is for her Captain.

She doesn’t see Inara for some time but she thinks about her often as she huddles with the crew while they are held at gunpoint. Getting threatened with a weapon wasn’t exactly the homecoming that she had been imagining but in a way it is a fitting end to her strange evening. Their captors were decent enough to allow her to change out of the dress but her makeup and ribbon remain and she sits there feeling awkward, a strange half-thing caught somewhere between the world were she belongs and the one that she tried to visit. When Inara does return, her arms are wrapped around the Captain and although she doesn’t want to see it, she has to admit that Inara seems at home there. She knows when she is beaten and at least she takes away her pretty dress and the memory of a few seconds when she believed she could be a fairytale princess.

Sitting on her bunk while she stares at her dress and listens to music, she decides that it wouldn’t be all that hard to imagine other, better memories for the dress and she is trying to do just that when she is interrupted by a hand that falls on her shoulder. She looks up and tries not to notice how her breath catches as her eyes sweep over Inara in all her finery. Inara smiles indulgently at her and then looks at the dress, “You looked so adorable in that but I think I like you better like this,” smooth fingers run over her dirty cheek and she flinches at the touch. “What’s wrong?”

“I shouldn’t have gone to that party.”

“I admit that it could have ended better but I saw you having fun with the food and the boys.”

“A lot of those people weren’t nice ‘Nara.”

“There’s ugliness everywhere dear one, it’s just that sometimes it’s really well dressed.”

“The girls there ain’t nice like you.”

“What did they say to you?”

“It don’t matter now.”

“If they upset you it matters to me.”

“They weren’t the worst part or nothing.”

“Kaylee did someone hurt you?” Inara looks concerned as she sits down on the edge of the bunk.

“It weren’t like that, it was just seeing you in that place with them fancy people, it made me realise I ain’t the one you belong with.”

“How can you think that?”

“It’s the truth.”

“So you think I should be with Atherton?”

“Even the Captain’s more suited to ya than me.”

“Mal is a good man but he’s infuriating.”

“So you’re with me cause I’m just easier.”

“I’m with you because you’re special.”

“I ain’t the one ‘Nara, I can’t give you pretty things, not like some of your clients can.”

“Kaylee my client for this little venture threatened to make me ugly because he didn’t get what he wanted from me.”

She reaches our and traces her fingers over Inara’s face, “You could never be ugly.”

“He wanted to scar me up so that no-one would want me anymore.”

“Even if you was burnt and covered in boils I’d still think you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”

Inara chuckles and then covers Kaylee’s hands with her own, “That’s what makes you special, you see things differently, you see beauty everywhere.”

“That ain’t hard when I’m looking at you.”

Inara repositions herself and then stalks, catlike, down the bunk until her lips are hovering over Kaylee’s, “You shouldn’t worry so much, I gave up that world, this is my home now.”

“But Serenity’s not the sort of place where you belong.”

“Maybe not but I don’t think about belonging to a place, I think I belong wherever you are.”

Inara isn’t a liar and Kaylee knows that she must believe what she says but that doesn’t mean that this is something that will last, she still worries that Inara will find someone more suitable but for now it’s more than enough, “We can get with the kissing.” Inara’s moves are deliberate and practiced and it’s not long before Kaylee is grunting as she thrust against Inara’s hand, forgetting for a time that she had any concerns at all but in the afterglow her doubts return and they seem to have brought reinforcements. She doesn’t know how you trust the words and actions of a woman whose job it is to make people fall in love with her but for tonight Inara is in her arms and in her bed and no-one in the verse can take that away from her.


End file.
